50 years on, Gareth Edwards’ try still greatest

It was a moment of sheer magic … poetry in motion – and still regarded rugby’s greatest try. The match: Barbarians against the All Blacks.

The scene: Cardiff’s old National Stadium. The date: 27 January, 1973 – yesterday 50 years ago. The moment: The Barbarians run from their own line in the opening minutes and Welsh scrumhalf Gareth Edwards scores in the corner after a wonderful team effort, where the ball was moved through half the team’s hands on the counter-attack.

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Edwards, at a 50th anniversary lunch held yesterday, said he feared his hamstring would stop him finishing off the move.

Edwards, who played 53 Tests and 10 for the British & Irish Lions, said: “Derek [Quinnell] passed, then I was thinking as I went up the touchline at a rate of knots ‘please God, don’t let my hamstring go now!’”

And the impact it had on rugby? Edwards said: “Wherever I go in the world, people want to talk about it.

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In the ’90s, I was fishing in the middle of nowhere in Russia and I was staying in a village where the mayor, who was a former nuclear submarine commander, took me back to his house, brought out a DVD, shoved it in the television and up came that try!” What a moment.

We wonder if it will ever be matched…